Writing this piece on the traditional Day of the Dead, November 2, it occurs to me that Creation Spirituality has many “patron saints” some of whom are not in any official church calendar. All the people who passed and that you recognize as contributors to your life are your patron saints. Would you agree? We can also call them “ancestors.”
I have in front of me the wedding day picture of my parents. They were far from perfect, but they did their best. They have become ancestors, and I will become an ancestor as well, once my work here is finished. The dead are not just gone, they become the honored root of the living. Recovering the ancient attitude of reverence toward past generations is part and parcel of the new spirituality based on the cycle of life, the cycle of seasons, the cycles of one’s own body/mind.
Other cultures may have never forgotten what Westerners need to recover, but we have imposed our modern way of thinking on everybody, so in the end we are all in the same boat. The attempts to look at human life and history as a straight arrow — dismissing the cycles and dismissing death — have brought on much destruction and unhappiness. A correction is overdue.
Medieval England adopted the custom of distinguishing between a day of remembrance of all the people whom God had already welcomed in heaven — All Hallows’ Day, from which the term “Halloween” comes — and a day of remembrance and prayer for those whom God had not yet welcomed but are going through a post-mortem process of purification in a disincarnate state — All Souls’ Day.
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This practice was begun at Cluny, the largest and most powerful Christian monastery of the 11th century. Indeed, it bears the signs of the power of the church to know who is in and who is out — or rather not in yet. While this may be uncomfortable, it also institutionalizes the psychic ambivalence that we feel toward our dead, sometimes heroes and sometimes very faulty human beings in need of purgation.
We can, of course, simply go back to the roots of this Christian practice and celebrate Samhain, the Celtic feast days on which most likely the monks at Cluny based their choice of the beginning of November as the proper days for honoring the dead and praying for their cleansing.
In any case, for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, the whole month of November is the season of dead leaves gracing the ground with their astonishing colors. A reminder of the glory of life in death. A time for silent meditation in front of the fire. As the dead wood goes up in living flames, the sparks are said to be souls of the dead speaking to you. Are you listening?
As the hours of light diminish as well, the symbolism of death becomes omnipresent and our psyches need to cope with the situation. The season is upon us, and living it consciously is better than pretending it is not happening. Those of us who have more of a melancholic soul terrain need to pay special attention to our needs. Stay warm, have soulful conversations, put little lights on. Cook hearty soups, massage your feet, get all the rest you need but don’t linger and keep a routine. Remember what the music of your soul is, and play it.
Tonight I shall boil some chestnuts, toss them with brandy, and light them. My grandmother said that each of them are a soul as well. Ingesting them after they cooled off is a way of communing with them again. Yes, paganism never really died in the countryside of old Europe!
Banner image: Many prayers for many souls. Photo by Vitalii Onyshchuk on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Can you listen to your dead? How? What do they say?
Related Reading by Matthew Fox
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science & Spirit Meet
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths
Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science
Charles Burack, ed. Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality & The Transformation of Christianity
1 thought on “The Dead/All Souls”
Thank you Gianluigi for this wonderful autumnal meditation. Your evocation of the dead summoned in me the last lines of a poem titled “Antidotes to Fear of Death,” by Rebecca Elson:
“And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.”
[For the full poem, see https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/04/10/antidotes-to-fear-of-death-rebecca-elson/ ]
I welcome the dark days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere with Eliot’s words:
“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.”
P.S. The reference to chestnuts along the picture of a bonfire also reminded me that the chestnuts from Italy I bought a few days ago will soon be roasted on an open fire.